Oracle Blog

Blog for Prashanth

Wednesday Dec 09, 2009

Microfinance has been recognized worldwide as a simple but powerful tool that enables the poor to pull themselves out of poverty. Most commonly, it involves making small loans to the working poor in developing countries. The loans are used to establish or expand small businesses that generate additional income for the family, enabling them to buy food, access healthcare, educate their children, put aside savings and lay the foundation for a better future. The microfinance organizations need capital to expand and reach more of the working poor. At the same time, millions of everyday people here in the United States are looking for ways to make investments that yield a financial return while making a positive impact on the world.
MicroPlace is doing a remarkable effort in connecting the investors to the working people in poverty thus providing more microfinance to the poor and addressing the poverty of the world. MicroPlace (an eBay Inc. company), launched in 2007, is a website that enables everyday people to invest in the world’s working poor. This online investment site, whose mission is to alleviate global poverty, facilitates investments in microfinance that has proven to be an effective way of transforming people on the margins of society into economically productive individuals. MicroPlace is championing a model that fuses people’s instincts to be philanthropic with the efficacy of investing to raise microfinance capital. To date, microfinance has enabled a billion people to lift themselves out of poverty. MicroPlace aims to extend microfinance’s helping hand to the next billion people working in poverty-- one investment at a time.
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